World of Warcraft creator Blizzard Entertainment won a $6m judgement from the maker of a software bot that allows users to play the wildly popular game while away from their computers.
MDY Industries was ordered to pay the sum last week, following a court finding in July that its distribution of the Glider bot infringed Blizzard …

mixed feelings

posting as a reformed WoW (crack) addict, I know that bots were one of the reasons i stopped playing, being out farming for a couple of hours when your shit is constantly being ninja'd by a 'chinese farmer'.

conversely, i had long entertained the desire to get glider because (more reasons for quitting) I became tired of spending hours/days/weeks farming for stuff when i could hear my guildies on vent running through dungeons and raids having a blast.

i do find it unfortunate that this dude made nowhere near the money that this ruling is insisting he cough up, but i suppose that is the way it goes. Blizz sure don't need his 6 mill. lets hope he can settle for far less.

Blizzard has millions (billions i suppose in the long term..?) on the line if everyone up and left because of these kind of issues, so using their not-insubstantial legal muscle to 'sending a message' to bot creators is one thing they can do to protect their investment.

dont know what they can do about manual gold farming sweatshops...

doesn't add too much to the intellectual pool but hey, if i was an intellectual giant would i be working in a call centre?

Call me melodramatic...

... but if the approach Blizzard are taking here (to go after the people who make the instruments of mischief, rather than the people who actually *perpetrate* the mischief itself) were to be applied to a somewhat more serious real-world scenario, wouldn't all of the gun manufacturers have been sued out of business decades ago?

Gold Sellers

Automating Certain Tasks

Such as slaying monsters and mining gold...doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of the game if you aren't doing those things? I mean if you're just there to get your jollies off chatting with a fat old greasy man disguised as a hot young female avatar why don't you just play The Sims?

Re Automating Certain Tasks

Not really. These are boring and repetitive tasks that Blizzard have injected into the game in order to make obtaining certain rewards a long winded process, thus in their minds lengthening the amount of time people will subscribe to the game.

The reality is there are far more substantial elements to World of Warcraft, otherwise you might as well simply get a hack and slash single player game, not pay a monthly subscription fee, and not risk having your character deleted when you cheat.

As for pervs pretending to be girls. I'm sure it happens, but the most complex elements of World of Warcraft, the parts that make the game so addictive, are only possible with voice communication. Coordinating the actions of 5, 10 or 25 people without it is all but impossible in these parts of the game, because they require information being passed back and forth significantly faster than you can type. The most common application used for this gives crystal clear conversation with extremely low overheads. At that point pretending to be a girl becomes somewhat difficult.

The appeal seems to be pretty broad. One thing I know for sure is it's played by more than a bunch of nerds, given the professions and attitudes of the players I've 'met'.

MMORPG bots

Going back a few years, I used to spend way too much time playing MMORPG's, but I eventually managed to wean myself off them with the use of a girlfriend (real not virtual). The sad thing is that you DO end up spending ages "grinding" skills just so that your character is strong enough to enjoy the actual fun parts of the game.

The only times I really enjoyed it were when I was roleplaying, and the physical skills of a character meant nothing (as the PVP was all staged and acted out), or when I first started, and grinding skills and money meant going with a bunch of real-life mates on teamspeak and going on a Rancor hunt (it was Star Wars Galaxies - my choice of poison).

A better method of achieving new skill levels would be to have a quest based (and even inject some story into it) system rather than a simple experience based one. This would encourage people to actually play the game and remove the need to "grind" skills.

So, sorry Blizzard, but my opinion is that if so many people require bots just to be able to start enjoying your game, it points to a weakness in the game itself.

Re: Call me melodramatic...

Ian,

They do also ban the user accounts heres a blizzard announcement on the subject:

"In keeping with Blizzard's aggressive stance against cheating in World of Warcraft, we banned over 30,000 accounts in the month of May, and with that removed well over 30 million gold from the economy across all realms."

Its finally good to see the writer of Glider taken down, some areas in some zones were just impossible to quest in due to bots (Burning Steppes east side for example), you may as well just abandon any quests for that location and move on, it wasn't worth the pain of trying to compete.

To Jay that thought 8million was excessive, no it wasn't, this really was a *good* case for punitive damages as it sens a nice big fat signal to anyone else thinking of writing a similar program, "Don't, or we will take more than you can earn from it.". Yes I feel sorry for him but he knew what he was doing and the grief that his program caused for profit.

Saves players years of hassle from having entire areas and quests unplayable while a court case is built and tried.

What about free bots?

I have seen other MMORPGs killed by too many bot users, but the problem there was often that the bots concerned were passed freely between players so they spread very quickly. The companies concerned withdrew their games because they didn't have the staff to keep finding and defeating the bots and so many non-bot players stopped playing and paying. If someone "open-sources" Glider or another bot that WoW cannot automatically detect, what does Blizzard do then? Can they afford to go after a free Glider? Probably one or two, but without the ability to claw back some money represented by pay-to-use bot programs even Blizzard may have trouble in the long run.

A step in the right direction?

As a founded geek and (unfortunately) dedicated player of WoW I am happy to see that Blizzard is now targeting the manufacturers of these Bots while at the same time identifying and banning the users of them.

Blizzard has in the last year removed all need for repetitive game play of gold farming and generic mob slashing so that players have the opportunity to focus on their targets final goals whether they are PvP or PvE. The only monotonous task left in the game now is the levelling up of a character that has even recently been improved by systems allowing you to level up 3 times as fast.

The purpose of Bots now days are only to support a ‘Glory Hunter’ who wishes to have everything in the game for none of the effort.

With regards to comments of perverts in the game; this is why WoW is accompanied with age restriction, parental controls, server types (PvP, PvE and RP) and even language filters to protect the innocent. But this really does fall into a whole different article.

Chicken or egg?

It seems to be that the bots are directly linked to gold farming. Sure, Blizzard have a right to go after the botting and botters, but when they add features to the game like elite flying mounts that cost 8000g to obtain (an amount that would take 'manual' effort of weeks to months of boring grind or many months of more normal playing) what do they expect?

If they really wanted to stop botting they would stop making game objectives cost huge amounts of gold to achieve. Put in an enjoyable quest that takes a long time to achieve instead? Nah - that would cost Blizzard.

For a company that profits hundreds of millions of dollars from a game, they could perhaps invest in coming up with ways to beat the botters/farmers.

@Now only if Blizzard did something about the gold sellers...

Other Bots?

I want to know why they only have gone after Gilder, a quick google search brings up loads of bot programs. They are based in America so that's why, I think.

I have been looking at glider and what it does is use a driver that makes wow think keys are being pressed. It does not alter game code at all, it does is break the Terms and Conditions of the account however.

People probably named Glider because it was the only bot name they know, it's like Hoover and Vacuuming.

yay

Judgement?

How did they reach this judgement. That's what's important.

Lots of software exists that allows interaction with other 3rd party software, if the home users who happen to use this software are in breach of a license then sue them. What next, sue every software house that produces a screen macro/automation tool of any type?

Does this mean that...

Meh.

So what is keeping the next generation smarty from creating a hardware based bot? You know, a small, simple computer that sits in between the mouse and keyboard and does a little pixel reading between the videocard and monitor plug. Hard? not at all, software for that already exists, and an Eee with a video-in USB dongle isn't -that- expensive.